Thursday, June 29, 2006

To buy, or not to buy...

Trying to purchase airline tickets at the cheapest price has always been a tricky cat-and-mouse game. Buy too early, and you could miss out on a last-minute sale. Buy too late, and the cheap seats may all be gone.

Help is on the way from Farecast.com.



Farecast takes much of the guesswork out of deciding when to actually make your ticket purchase. Using sophisticated prediction and modeling technologies, Farecast determines whether a particular fare is likely to go up or to go down from now until the time you plan to fly. Still in beta testing (the site only works for flights to/from Boston and to/from Seattle), the site provides you with a "Fare Prediction" and "Fare History" for your route—and here's the coolest part—suggests whether you should BUY NOW or WAIT to purchase your tickets. Plus there's a flexible search function that lets you compare fares for a 30-day period so you can see the cheapest days to fly. Finally, the site shows you actual fares for your trip, along with links for making your final booking. Which means there are none of those added booking fees that some other sites charge.

Check out Farecast.com today. And while you're there, be sure to VOTE for your favorite/home airport to help ensure it will be one of the first added to the site as it expands in the future.

Monday, June 19, 2006

Maximize your Miles with the MileMaven

It's not often that I find a web site that's as useful as the MileMaven. This brilliant travel tool helps make sure you get the absolute MOST frequent flyer miles before you book your next trip. Planning to fly from San Francisco to New York City? Enter those cities on the MileMaven home page, and you'll see bonus mileage opportunities on SFO to NYC flights from 11 different airlines. Plus MileMaven lists the average airfare paid AND the on-time record for each airline flying that particular route. MileMaven will also let you know which major hotel chains at your destination are offering frequent flyer miles for booking a room. There are also a couple of other nifty gadgets such as the Mileage Calculator that lets you know how many frequent flyer miles you'll be earning on your flight. From now on, the Travel Coach will ALWAYS consult the MileMaven.